Inside the corporate intelligence company which bankrolled Liam Fox

A South African intelligence expert made payments of as much as £60,000 through his security company for an unregistered charity linked to Dr Liam Fox.

Andre Pienaar, a multi-millionaire who keeps out of the public limelight, runs G3 Good Governance Group, a corporate security and intelligence company whose clients include the defence contractor BAE Systems.

In a lucrative industry reliant on insider information and expertise, Mr Pienaar has made it his business to be well-connected. A number of Establishment figures are on the company’s payroll.

G3’s main source of income is providing intelligence for big business including “competitor analysis” and cyber security at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds. There is no suggestion that the company, which is worth about £20 million, has operated in any way outside the law.

The chairman of G3’s advisory board is the Duke of Westminster, while the company worked behind the scenes — and free of charge — as security consultants in the run-up to this summer’s royal wedding. As a result, Mr Pienaar, 41, received an invite to the wedding ceremony as a guest of Buckingham Palace.

Lt Gen Sir Graeme Lamb, the former director of UK Special Forces, is also listed as a G3 adviser, while Lord Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, is a non-executive director of Proven, an investigatory arm of G3.

Geoffrey Tantum, a former MI6 Middle East director with wide-ranging connections, is also on the advisory council. Mr Tantum’s daughter, Laura, operates Universal Exports, G3’s charitable foundation which is also the name of the fictional company used as cover by James Bond.

The charity’s trustees include Lord Ashdown and Lady Deborah Peat, the wife of the Prince of Wales’s former principal private secretary.

According to sources, Dr Fox’s office first approached Mr Pienaar in 2008 for funding for a Sri Lankan-based charity. Dr Fox had a long-standing interest in the country, dating back to the mid-1990s when he was a junior foreign office minister. Dr Fox’s best man Adam Werritty, whose friendship led to his downfall, was also involved in the negotiations.

They agreed that G3 – which has no commercial interests in Sri Lanka — would pay to set up the Sri Lanka Development Trust through a Scottish law firm to help with reconciliation and reconstruction of a country torn apart by years of civil war. The charity, however, was never registered with the Charity Commission nor with Companies House.

No details of its accounts appear in any public records. The Sunday Telegraph has been told that G3’s co-founder Hugh Petre, an Old Etonian who has since left the company, was never told about the payments linked to Dr Fox.

The former Defence Secretary travelled to Sri Lanka three times on flights paid for by the trust in 2009 and 2010 while he was in opposition. The flights were declared in Dr Fox’s register of MPs’ interests. The trust’s address is given as the business address of G3, although the company says it never carried out any work for the charity on its premises.

Between 2008 and 2011, G3 says it made payments to the Sri Lanka Development Trust totalling “no more than £45,000”. A further payment of £15,000 was paid to Pargav Ltd in June this year, which G3 believed would be given to the trust. Pargav is a company set up on behalf of Mr Werritty and funded his travel around the world and even the purchase of shoes, a handmade suit and a trip to a topless bar in New York. G3 is now reviewing the payment made to Pargav.

A spokesman for G3 said last week: “In 2008, we were asked by Dr Liam Fox, then the shadow defence secretary, to give advice about the reconstruction of northern Sri Lanka after the sudden end of the civil war.

Dr Fox explained that he wanted to play a constructive role in the peaceful reconstruction of the country. Our advice, which was provided on a pro bono basis, related to how a charity of this nature might be structured.

“The Sri Lanka Development Trust was subsequently established but we have never had any involvement in its work. Good Governance Group has no business or other related business in Sri Lanka, has no clients there and has never worked for its government.”

G3 admits holding meetings with Dr Fox, both in government and in opposition, but says officials or civil servants were always present. Mr Pienaar is chief executive of G3 although he sold his shares in the company in the spring to a Swedish investment company for about £14 million before the scandal over Dr Fox emerged.

He was previously head of the South African division of Kroll, the world’s biggest risk and security consultancy. G3 has been hugely successful since Mr Pienaar co-founded it in 2004. The company saw its turnover double between 2010 and 2011 from £6 million to £12 million and raised its profits from £1.3 million to £2.4 million — during the period Dr Fox was appointed as Defence Secretary.

A source in the security and intelligence business said Mr Pienaar had been keen to help Dr Fox while he was in opposition. “G3 had defence clients but wanted to get more,” said the source. “The deal with Fox was kept quiet even within the company.”